


Soothsayer

by Whenhopediesyoung



Series: You know the dance (those damnable steps) [3]
Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Raven meets Charles, Raven sees herself as a soilder first, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:20:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21648922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whenhopediesyoung/pseuds/Whenhopediesyoung
Summary: He looked at her, through her and her lip curled like a dog's. She didn't like him.(He looked like he saw her, like he understood, like he grieved with her)
Relationships: Azazel/Raven | Mystique (X-Men), Erik Lehnsherr/Raven | Mystique, Raven | Mystique & Charles Xavier
Series: You know the dance (those damnable steps) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555777
Kudos: 2





	Soothsayer

There's somethings Raven never understands. Why humans think they're better then she is. How people feel things like grief and identity. How so many of her kind can think laying passively will get them what they need. What she needs, actually needs, to feel like a complete person.

If she really grieves _her_ , like she says she does. Sliently of course, and not. Though subtly enough even Lehnsherr doesn't realize she is. _If someone dies without anyone to mourn does it make a sound, does it sound like a single word, like the throaty cry of a_ raven _?_

She understands, functionally plenty of other things though. How to snap a neck, and when. What gesture to use to make a mark really believe her lies. What it means, when Erik is angry and righteous and storming around their newest hide away.

That last one means Charles.

"Just let me kill him." She tries, without much hope for a outcome. Erik's back tenses at the thought, as if the death of his rival is unfathomable. _He doesn't make you_ , she wants to say, but Raven knows herself enough to know she doesn't understand love.

What Raven feels for Erik is different, is a live thing and painful and maybe better off dead. (Maybe she understands love after all).

Erik, she knows, would break if Charles died. Would die with him, fire guttering out like a candle under a storm. She can see it sometimes, angry, immovable Erik crumbling under the knowledge as if their lives were the same. No matter how far from the incident he'd be. (She died once, she keeps waiting for it to get better).

She knows a grief like that is immutable, so she asks with no expectation behind her voice. She notices, because Raven always notices, that Erik keeps her away from Charles regardless. It almost hurts, which is novel and a good enough reason to keep asking anyway.

And then she meets him. He is handsome, with thick wavy hair and blue eyes that seem to hold the grief of the World within them. Not to do anything with the grief, just contain it, silently in those stricken eyes. He looks at her and Raven is at once filled with inexplicable distaste.

She can feels his eyes settle upon the half empty bag that is her, can feel it like a hand pressing against the disordered pieces of her personality. The little scrapes she has saved, has added up into herself seem pitiful underneath his sorrowful gaze. Here is a man who understands the language of grief.

She hates him. Despises the knowledgeable loss that wraps him like a coat. The words greater good serve as road signs for him, he'll measure how far to go off them for eternity. That's not the bad part. The fact that he'll discard his people like Erik, with the added insult of actually mourning them. The bad part is he knows.

He knows about the rain and fire and grief that spell Raven into the bruised meat of her mind. He knows about the hours she spent at attention, eyes staring at nothing, stuck in her own head. About the relief she takes from knowing Erik won't mourn her for an instant. Knows that she smiles at Azazel more then the others because he's empty inside and mean with it.

He knows and grieves for Raven twice over, for the name and the mutant, for all the World he hears. He knows better then to offer her the better life he throws like scrapes to her and Lehnsherr's soilders. He told her the path she'd chosen (her only illusion of option) wouldn't end in death. But abandonment.

He knows she's not a person not really. Just a wire frame of one, covered in black oil slick. A imitation going through the motions to see who catches on. To see if anyone can make her into a real person. He knows there's not enough there, amongst attention and parade stances to scrape together an actual human being.

Unlike her brotherhood he knew enough to know that trying would destroy him in the effort. And so he didn't make one. Only looked at her like she had been human once, inspite of all evidence to the contrary. Like she had lost something, fumbled it and now it was gone forever. Like it was, sadly, unfortunately, undeniably, her fault.

Raven really hated Charles.


End file.
